13 Jun
2008
13 Jun
'08
11:33 p.m.
Thought experiment: how many people would bother to register their cars, or even to get driver's licenses at all, if the "highway patrol" and it's equivalent didn't exist
This has actually been a problem here in London where the highway patrol does not exist. After Central London congestion charging was instituted with cameras that read car number plates in real time, they started to crack down on these vehicles. And in the past couple of years they have started patrolling streets in areas where the offenders are most likely to live, looking for cars with expired registrations. So this is a case where people did behave as you predict, and this has led to the creation of something like a "highway patrol". --Michael Dillon